June 19, 2024 • 48 mins
In this special episode, we're sharing insights from the D2C Podcast I was recently on. If you're a business owner, entrepreneur, or interested in the marketing community, this conversation is packed with valuable insights on how to grow and scale your business effectively.
We'll cover:
The challenges and progress of 2023
Implementing the EOS framework for better business operations
The journey of Live Bearded and its sustainable growth
The importance of diversified marketing strategies
Lessons learned from affiliate marketing
Creating true scarcity and exclusivity in your offerings
Effective direct marketing strategies
Building strong customer connections
The fundamentals of content strategy
Investing in your team for growth and success
Exciting plans for 2024 and beyond
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Entitled to Nothing, where we believe our
life is our fault.
My name is Mink and today I'vegot the privilege to share a
special episode with you guys.
I was recently interviewed onthe D2C podcast, and if you're
in the marketing community, ifyou're an entrepreneur or you
work online, I'm sure you'veheard of the D2C podcast.
They're one of the best onesout there, bringing amazing
(00:22):
insights and strategies and waysto grow and build our
businesses.
So I wanted to bring thispodcast here and share it with
you guys.
I sat down with Eric.
We had an incredibleconversation about all things
business.
We talked about thefundamentals of business, what
I'm doing at Live Bearded togrow in 2024, and ultimately,
how, as a business owner, thegreatest thing we can do is
(00:45):
serve the community that wesupport, and so if you're a
business owner, if you're anentrepreneur or if you want to
start a business, I recommendthis podcast for you guys.
I think you'll love theconversation that we had.
We had a lot of fun and I thinkyou'll get some value from it.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
All the plans for the year and, yeah, we're excited
about big things and this yearwas good too, like this.
It was a struggle this year,like it definitely was harder in
2023 and 20 than it was in 2022for us.
Yeah, but uh made a lot of goodprogress, so nice man.
Do you guys use any specificframework like eos or scaling up
or we, we've been trying to useeos like on and off for years
(01:21):
and we're kind of using it andkind of not using it, like we're
definitely getting some.
We now we haven't.
We have a daily standup and wehave our L10s, okay, um, but the
goal with this would, now thatwe have this like year long kind
of objective across all thedifferent departments is to
implement it a little bit better, do you guys?
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah, so we started using it last year.
We like had our leader, we weset a leadership team, had
everybody read it, started theprocess and then about halfway
through the year, I hired anamazing executive assistant who
was really, really experiencedin EOS itself.
So she just transformed ourability to implement it, like
use the tools better, held usaccountable.
So we do L10s in everydepartment now, like, the
(02:00):
leadership person in thatdepartment assigns rocks to
their team.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
So it's still you know, we're a year in, so it's
still new, but it's been very,very helpful for us for sure I
think you said it there like youkind of you almost you need
that implementer, though youkind of need the person whose
like job it is to like geteveryone on track with it right,
because it's hard when you'vegot your team doing all this
stuff and then on top of ityou're like, okay, take on this
(02:24):
whole new structure.
Like having that other personhelping be accountable for it
helps so much.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
As founders.
It's like you're trying tolearn enough and implement
enough at once to then try tolike, bring in this system and
figure out the tools and do allthe things.
So we just got really lucky.
Honestly, regina had learned itfrom a previous opportunity
that she worked in, so it was uh, it was awesome.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Very cool.
Well, let's just start thispodcast with some EOS banter, I
think.
That's like.
I think half the half of thepodcast listeners probably are
thinking about implementing thator not.
It's definitely definitelysuper helpful.
Um, but, anthony, welcome tothe podcast.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Thanks, bro.
It's a pleasure to be here, man.
I've been listening to thepodcast ever since it came out.
I well, it's like three or fouryears now.
Right, it's been a while.
Lots of amazing tips along theway, so it's a pleasure to be
here.
I feel like you guys aredefinitely one of the best in
the space and it's an honor toget on here and chop it up and
hopefully connect with somelisteners and share a few things
along the way.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
You are also another one of the gift that keeps on
giving from Carly Craig.
Carly Craig just continuallyintroduces me to new people in
the industry.
Like you got to have Anthony onthe podcast I think you got.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
maybe you met at the blue ribbon mastermind or at
some sort of a businessmastermind in Puerto Rico at
blue ribbon and then just yeah,obviously connected.
She's amazing.
She's also introduced me to afew other people in the space,
so I feel like she's one ofthose just like super connectors
in the space, but an incrediblehuman for sure.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Nice, Okay, Take me, take me to the beginning of.
You know I've been following,you know, multiple beer brands
in this DTC space since I kindof came into it in in 2016,.
Some have hit it big, Some havefallen by the wayside.
Live Bearded is just continuingto grow steadily.
Talk about your journey alittle bit.
How did it get started?
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Yeah, I mean my.
My personal journey started allthe way back in 2009.
I worked a bunch of bullshitjobs I hated and ultimately got
to a place where I decided Iwanted to be able to make money
online so I could travel, and Ithink I was a little bit ahead
of my time, you know, trying tofigure out how to make money
online in 2009, 2010.
Ultimately, I taught myselfFacebook ads, which obviously
(04:20):
you know you guys are theexperts at.
Learned how to buy traffic backin 2011.
Spent five years in theaffiliate space, driving leads,
building lists, selling otherpeople's shit and sold a couple
businesses, built a couple thatfailed.
Ultimately, that led me to kindof no-shave, november 2015.
And one of my best friends,spencer.
We've known each other for 18years.
(04:40):
At this point he was growingout his first beard and we
always talked about workingtogether, maybe figuring out a
way to start a business that waskind of built around men and
community and things like that.
Uh, he was like, have you everthought about starting a beard
company?
And I was like I didn't evenhave a beard.
It was like stubble.
And I was like no, I haven'tthought about it.
But the conversation continuedand I went on to Alibaba.
I bought 500 wood combs.
(05:02):
I got had a like a Fiverrdesigner make a live bearded
logo.
We stamped it on there and Iwas like, let's see if we can
sell some fucking beard combs.
Long story short, I set up afree plus shipping offer to see
if we could sell 500 combs, setup a Facebook funnel and we sold
all of them in the first day.
And and then we had to figureout how to fricking send out 500
combs, cause we weren'texpecting that.
So we went to like OfficeMax,figured out, bought the shipping
(05:25):
stuff.
The rest is history.
We went from you know, the ideaof a free plus shipping offer
to.
We ended up doing about 10,000customers in the first year, and
the purpose of those firstcustomers was let's just build
as many like, let's invite asmany people into a Facebook
group as possible and let'sconnect with them and get to
know what they like, what theydon't want, what they need, what
(05:45):
products they're using, and so,rather than just diving into
manufacturing out of the gateand going all in, we really kind
of did a minimum viable productapproach.
We did the beard combs.
We had a couple other productsthat we like got made in China
just to try to get new customersinto the funnel that were
grooming related.
And then ultimately we startedsurveying our audience and they
(06:06):
told us exactly what productsthey used, what they liked, what
they didn't like, and then thatultimately led to us developing
our own line of custom beardproducts.
We launched the website kind ofend of 2016.
And, uh, you know, we've reallyhad growth 45, 40 to 45% growth
kind of year over year.
Since then.
And you know you mentioned alot of businesses have kind of
(06:28):
come and gone.
Businesses like the Beard Clubskyrocketed out of nowhere to a
million dollars a month almostovernight.
You know Beard brand has been apillar in the space since 2012.
So there's these companies thathave been around, but you know,
for us we really just focusedon how do we build a brand, how
do we connect with our communityand how do we build a business
(06:49):
that is going to be asustainable, long-term in.
In my affiliate days I builtthis entire seven figure
business on the back of Facebookpages and Facebook ads and in a
day they changed theiralgorithm.
Reach went down.
Then in another day, changedtheir algorithm reach went down.
Then in another day theychanged their algorithm.
Reach went down and I went frommaking seven figures a month as
an affiliate living the fuckingdream to basically making no
(07:13):
money and needing to start allthe way over, and so I realized
very quickly the worst number inbusiness is one, and we decided
with Live Bearded, we're goingto have a very diversified,
long-term approach to thebusiness, and it was really
focused on how do we fostercommunity and culture, and today
I'm proud to say I think one ofthe best aspects of our brand
is nearly 50% of all of ourrevenue is repeat customer.
(07:34):
So we've really nailed theretention, we've nailed the
community and ultimately, that'sjust been built on this idea of
how do we actually give a damnabout our customer and go out of
our way to make sure they havethe best customer experience
possible.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
It's the best of both worlds.
You know I'm an affiliate.
I was.
I started in 2009 slinginge-cards and dating subscriptions
and all sorts of things on.
Google and yeah, it was, and Iremember, I remember in 2009,.
I'm like, why imagine allagencies spent like we spent,
and as opposed to spraying andpraying or whatever, and you
know we're changing buttoncolors and we're making sure the
(08:08):
funnel is congruent at everystep.
And I came up all throughaffiliate marketing and then I
really was there in 2016, 2017,when all these affiliates were
having the same experience.
You were where they were havingtheir legs taken out from under
them with for from differentpolicy changes and this, and
that with nothing left to standon because they weren't really
bringing anything to theequation except the marketing
know-how.
And so when you can combine thefact like the way you got into
(08:30):
the product you know was sosmart by de-risking yourself
with you know your products,finding your product market fit
or anything, so it's very I knewit was going to be dangerous
when affiliates started gettingserious about building lasting
businesses, because they alsohave that scrappy skillset to be
able to get up a funnel andmake sure it works and then, and
then when it does work, theyare able to they're confident to
put, put the volume down andgrow it too, right.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Yeah, I think you're.
You're spot on.
I mean, I think the mostimportant skill in business is
knowing how to make a sale right.
There's, like every, all thesedifferent skills that you need,
but one of my, one of my firstmentors his name's Joe Polish.
He's a legend in the space, Um.
I randomly met him at the gym.
We became friends.
I did some like work for himfor free, just to learn and be
(09:12):
in the environment, and one ofthe first lessons he told me is
he's like Anthony, your numberone job as an entrepreneur is
you have to learn how to make asale so that you can pay for all
the mistakes that you're goingto make until you learn how to
actually be a successfulbusiness owner.
And I think to your point, ifthe affiliates or if someone
goes out and cuts their teeth inpaid media or social media or
(09:34):
content or whatever thatskillset is that can generate
visibility.
Today you know we've seen a lotof businesses in our industry
come and go, as you mentioned,and a lot of it is because they
just didn't have the skills tomaintain visibility.
Maybe they had an opportunitywith an algorithm or a specific
media channel, but as thoseevolve and change, if you're not
(09:55):
balanced, you really dostruggle.
Again, that's been somethingthat we've been very intentional
with, and for anybody out therewho's in the game, who's on the
journey, the number one adviceI could give you from an
amplification or awarenessstandpoint is you have to build
multiple channels of visibilityor traffic so that when changes
happen, when freaking updates,iOS updates take place like I
(10:18):
feel like every year, there'sanother big challenge.
I know this year there's abunch of stuff going on with
email and it's happening to allof us, but it happens to you.
It affects you less if you dothe effort required to build a
multidimensional traffic funneland awareness system naturally,
(10:44):
which is really connect withyour customers, really
understand their problems and bereally reflexive.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
You know, a lot of affiliate marketing is just
about the offer and you hammerthe offer as hard as you can and
then you find another offer,kind of thing.
But you've kind of built thelegs on the stool along with
your distribution system to havethis strong community, this
responsive community.
Your beard's good, yourco-founder's beard, is out of
this world.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
I think that's the other essential thing is you've
got a good beard, but he'sgenuinely one of the best guys I
know, amazing human and I'vebeen.
I've been privileged to workwith him for the last you know,
eight years on this project, butbe friends for 18.
And you know, the one thingthat I learned through just luck
, honestly, is Spence and I havevery different skill sets.
He's an implementer right, wewere using EOS framework
(11:41):
language earlier.
He is the integrator, like itperfectly, and I'm the visionary
perfectly.
And what's great about that isI'm the idea guy, I'm the
visionary, I'm thinking aboutstrategy, I can do the
optimization of funnels, testnew things, but long term, he's
the guy that goes to the teamand executes it.
So the balance between us isanother one of those luck in
(12:02):
some ways, but but also likerealizing that that was the case
over time.
We really leaned into that andelevated each other in our own
like best skill sets.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Let's go back to tactics for a second.
You mentioned that you launchedthe biz with free plus shipping
and I remember that wasespecially back then.
That was, that was the mode toget your product out there, to
get that first sale, to buildwhat's working today, what's
working today in your directmarketing efforts that gets you
into the hands of the customermost effectively.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
It's a great question and honestly, I don't feel like
we have any one channel that isjust crushing it.
I think it's just consistentover time.
You know, we've really focusedon the fundamentals.
So, you know, email generateshalf of our revenue.
You know, anywhere from like 40to 50%.
We do a lot of seasonallaunches and new products and
fragrances.
So I think, from a retentionstandpoint, you know, in
(12:53):
e-commerce once you acquire themwhich typically that's the most
difficult thing to do you'vegot to have a way to send them.
And so we've built a seasonallaunch model where we have a
limited number of products everyquarter that go out.
They're unique in fragrance andthere's true scarcity, there's
true exclusivity and they sellout almost immediately.
And so, from a marketingstandpoint like I never realized
(13:15):
the power of true scarcity andtrue exclusivity until we
actually had it, and when it'swhen it is true and you're not,
you know, doing the funny tricksthat a lot of brands do it's
incredible the impact that ithas on the business.
So that's a that's a huge thingfor us, but in terms of just
generating business, all of ourwe have two main funnels.
The first one is a samplefunnel for us, but in terms of
just generating business, all ofour.
(13:36):
We have two main funnels.
The first one is a samplefunnel for us and we built it in
a way for any listener outthere that wants to go take a
look at it, dissect it.
You can go to livebeardedcomforward slash sample and that's
a page I've painstakinglyoptimized.
Over a year and a half we tookthe conversion rate from four to
5% up to 13% on cold traffic,and that's by really dialing in
(14:00):
the offer, figuring out whatbonuses we can give away to
stack value, but then alsoreally working on the creative.
All of our ads run on Facebook,instagram, youtube.
We haven't really figured outhow to crack the TikTok.
We've played with it a littlebit, but that hasn't worked so
well.
And then yesterday, actually, Iwas just meeting with my
marketing team and we weredissecting.
We have a giveaway funnel.
(14:20):
We've been running this damngiveaway forever and I was
always like I don't know aboutthe true value that it adds.
We know it adds some value.
We generate new leads everymonth but I could never quantify
it.
And I'll be the first to tellyou I'm not a data analyst.
I'm pretty weak when it comesto extrapolating like deep
customer journey value.
But we brought a fact offractional CMO in to really help
(14:44):
with that and he was dissectingit for us and he was like I
think these giveaway guys aremaybe some of the best new
customers you get and, um, it'sreally amazing because the setup
if you guys want to look atthat funnel again, I'm here to
just help.
Any way I can go tolivebeardedcom forward slash
giveaway.
You do have to opt in, but Iwould recommend it.
(15:04):
Don't buy the shit unless yougot a beard.
But you can see our followupsequence, you can see the thank
you page.
But basically what we're doingis we're taking them from a
giveaway where we're giving awayhundreds of dollars of product
every month and making them animmediate offer and then making
them multiple offers over thecourse of a week and then we
drop them into our nurturesequence.
Those are our two main offersand that really brings in all of
(15:25):
our new leads and all of ournew customers.
One of our biggest quarterly andannual rocks this year is
actually to build a couple ofnew acquisition offers because
we want to be able to scale morehorizontally.
But I've got a full creativeteam.
I've got four guys in thecontent department.
We've got three full-timevideographers a creative
director, a script writer and sowe're spending a lot of time
(15:48):
trying to create scripted videos.
We actually went through theHarmon Brothers training my
content team did a few years agoand then we brought someone
over.
We brought someone over fromChamber Media, if you know who
those guys are, and we tried to-.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Yeah, I want to go stay at his hotels in Utah.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Yeah, someone just sent me that in Instagram.
It looks super crazy.
But to answer your question ina long-winded form, I mean
really we don't have anythingthat's fancy, we're just
focusing on the fundamentals.
Like I talked about um, we'vegot a great creative team in
house, so we generate a lot ofcreative.
We do a lot of YouTube stuff.
We launched a podcast to justnurture the community.
(16:25):
We email three or four times aweek mostly content, do the
quarterly promotions, launch newproducts as often as we can.
So we're we're really focusedon how can we add value to the
community.
And then how can we?
I think that like new,something new, whether it's a
new label, a new version, a newfragrance, whatever it is.
We found that there's just asuperpower in giving something
(16:49):
new to your community andthere's a large percentage of
them that are just going to comeback and rebuy.
So we just really tap into thatand then do everything we can
to make sure that the customeris having a good experience
along the way.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
You say fundamentals, but this is the fundamentals
from someone who's also done 10years of affiliate marketing, I
think in a way, I'm just goingback to the fact that you said
that your giveaway list, lookingthrough data, has actually
turned out to be one of yourmore valuable customer lists,
cause that's not generally thecase.
A lot of the times you getpeople coming in for giveaways
and they're just there for thefreebies, uh, and that's maybe
(17:21):
even what you were assuming, butthat you're not seeing that.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Yeah, so I can speak to it, uh, pretty specifically.
So we had we've tested a fewgiveaways that had nothing to do
with our products.
So we're like we should come upwith like this bad-ass man's
bundle.
And it was like we went out andspent like $500 on like axes
and backpacks and camping gearand it was going to be like this
cool, like rugged bug out bagtype thing where you've got all
this cool stuff and we got thecheapest leads we've ever got
(17:47):
and they didn't buy shit.
It was terrible, um, but whenwe give away stuff, that's maybe
less sexy, but it's our product.
So every day we're giving away abeard oil, every week we're
giving away a grooming kit, andthen every month we have this
like grand prize.
It's like $350 worth of value,I think.
It's like six months worth ofproduct, our electric trimmer,
(18:08):
et cetera.
So it's so specific to ourproducts that people that are
going to apply have a actualinterest in the products
themselves, and I think that's abig distinction.
If you have a brand and you'veran a giveaway but it didn't
work, the more congruent you cangive to your actual product,
the better, and I wouldrecommend, if it's possible, to
(18:29):
just give a.
You know, for us, obviouslyit's a consumable, it's a
cosmetic, so we can just give itaway through a giveaway and
then they'll come back and buyit if they like.
But finding something that is,you know, congruent or or an in
support of the product thatyou're using, I think is
critical.
And then just thinking about thepsychology of that type of a
(18:50):
lead, so we we capture theirlead and we send them to a page
and we're like, hey, buy now for25% off.
No one bought anything.
And I'm like, okay, well, theycame from free and I'm trying to
give them a discount.
What if they come from free andI give them free?
So then we started testing freeshit.
So it was like buy thisgrooming kit and get a free comb
(19:10):
or a free dog kit or a freeaccessory, and then ultimately,
the more value we can stack asthe free gift, the higher that
conversion rate is going to go.
And so what we found was we getpretty cheap leads on the
giveaway and a pretty greatconversion rate on the thank you
page.
But the psychology is the same.
They're entering for free shitand then it's like, hey, well,
(19:31):
we'll give you more free shit,but you're going to have to
spend something this time andyou can see the current offer
that we're working on thatgiveaway flow, like I told you.
But I think it comes down tothe psychology and making sure
that you're not just trying togive away something sexy and get
cheap leads.
I think that's where you see somany of these co-opted giveaway
(19:53):
lists that used to be all overthe place in e-commerce.
Candidly, we never did any ofthose because of the psychology
behind it.
You want the best quality leads, not just the cheapest ones you
can get 100%.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
It makes me think.
Actually we were just lookingat in our editorial this meeting
about the Snoop Dogg campaign,the Snoop Dogg stove campaign.
So they launched nationallywith that huge I think it was
Wilk Stove or some some bigstove company.
With that, that Snoop is goingsmokeless and it got national
coverage and it got like it hadso many eyeballs but it did not
move the needle for them at alland they had to fire the.
(20:23):
CEO because he's an irrelevant,he's an incongruent person to
their core audience.
They just announced two oftheir new influencers are these,
you know, mid?
Not certainly not Snoop Dogg'slevel of fame, but they're much
more relevant.
They're outdoorsmen, they'rethey're people who cook outdoors
, kind of thing, and that's,that's their new strategy.
It's a lot more on brand, onfocus, congruent with what
they're actually trying to do.
Maybe everyone learned abouttheir brand, that brand name,
(20:45):
and maybe, who knows, down theroad, more and more people will
be like oh, that was the SnoopDogg joke brand, but it's not
really relevant.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Yeah, it's so.
I didn't realize the secondpart of that story.
I knew Snoop did the thing forthe solo stove and I saw the
massive amount.
Every fucking podcast Ilistened to business, political,
person, whatever they were alltalking about it.
But it's so true, right?
It doesn't matter how muchvisibility you get.
If you're trying to sellsomeone something, you've got to
have some intent, and so justawareness by itself isn't
(21:13):
necessarily always going to beworth it, in my opinion, and
you've got to be authentic asyou and if you're starting your
campaign with a lie.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
You know you're starting it with a trick, or how
we're tricking you.
He's going to smoke pot.
He's not going to smoke potanymore.
Yeah Right, uh.
But like that's also not a wayto build trust and authenticity,
and I guess that's where I gowith.
My next question is like whatdo you?
What have been the key stepsfor you guys?
I guess it's just been a littlebit of everything.
It's been the brand image, it'sbeen the product role.
How have you built thatconnection so well?
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Honestly, it's consistent effort over time and
it's probably the one thing I'mmost proud of.
I actually spoke at amastermind on Friday and one of
the guys in a Q&A session waslike hey, I went to your website
.
You have 60,000 five-starreviews.
How are you doing that?
Are you paying people?
Are you incentivizing them?
What's the deal here?
(22:01):
And I was like the deal is,we've been doing this for eight
years and we've worked our assoff to deliver on the promise,
to make sure that we are alwayscongruent with what we say.
If there's scarcity, there'strue scarcity.
We're not playing tricks.
We're not doing marketingtactics for a short-term benefit
.
I think we've been playing thelong game.
Even though in the beginning Iwasn't planning on keeping Liv
(22:23):
bearded for the long term, Ialways knew that I needed to
maintain the trust and theauthenticity with the brand, and
so I would just say one we wehave kind of Spencer and I have
really infused our personalityinto the company, both from a
value standpoint but how wespeak, and we've been ruthless
with never misleading ourcustomers, like we were just
(22:46):
talking about.
If there's scarcity, it's truescarcity.
If something's out of stock,like we don't play any funny
games, and then ultimately, wetry to have the most customer
focused centric return policy.
And in the details, like a lotof times, I'll give you an
example.
So, with customer service, weget a customer that buys a
product.
They don't like the fragrance.
(23:06):
They call in and they're likehey, you know, I don't like the
fragrance, can I swap it out?
Yeah, no problem, we got you.
What fragrance do you want?
We immediately send them thenew fragrance.
The next next question is well,do I have to send this one back
?
And we've trained our team tosay something to the effect of
you know what, brother, we don'twant you to have to deal with
going to the post office,packaging it up and sending it
back.
We can't do anything with itanyway, since you've already
(23:28):
used it.
So just do us a favor, give itto a friend, pass it on as a
gift and tell them about us, andthat right there has generated
so much excitement and authorityfor us.
They're in the book Contagious.
Jonah Berger says the best thingthat you can do is print social
currency and give yourcommunity a way to create social
(23:49):
currency for themselves.
And if we give you a productthat you pay for and you have
the opportunity to get adifferent one and then give the
one you didn't like to somebody.
We're giving you socialcurrency in your community.
My warehouse manager hisbrother did that to him, gave it
to him.
He fell in love with the brand,came on as a customer service
rep, became a customer servicemanager and now he leads our
(24:10):
entire warehouse and fulfillmentteam.
And so it's just doing theselittle things where we're truly
focusing on how do we buildrelationships every step of the
way?
How do we do the hard thinginstead of the easy thing?
Most people in our world todayare looking for the easy button
and they want as quick, theywant to make as much money off
their list as possible, theywant to get as much cash up
front as they can.
(24:30):
And I think if you can flip thescript and play the long game
and focus more on reputation,then you have the opportunity to
build a following of peoplethat just truly love you, and
that is the best asset of thebrand.
I mean I know every year we'regoing to generate eight plus
figures in revenue.
Half of that's going to be fromemail, half of that's going to
(24:51):
be from repeat customers.
That's going to be from repeatcustomers and we just have built
this ecosystem that willsustain, regardless of what
takes place in the marketplaceand how things go, and it comes
down to really like A we give ashit about our customers Boring
lame.
We've focused on the long termand we've just been consistent.
(25:11):
Over time.
I've heard it said that thelike a personal brand or a
business brand is really justthe digitization of reputation
and once you create thatreputation, it takes years to
create it, but you can torch itin a second.
You can burn it all down very,very quickly.
So we're just trying to alwaysbe cautious of how we represent
the brand and make sure thatwe're always acting within the
(25:33):
values of ourselves in thecommunity.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
You were talking before the holidays, when we had
our pre-interview, also aboutthings that don't scale as well,
where you're talking aboutliterally sending handwritten
notes to your best customersover Christmas, like that's a
perfect example of somethingyou're not going to see a
financial return from, but it'sthat like every day you write
the book, every day you kind ofbuild that, build those
relationships.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah, it's crazy.
I went into Shopify and Ididn't.
They added new features whereyou can do like a really easily
sort by like number of orders orvalue, value, total customer
value, and we have dozens ofcustomers that have ordered over
a hundred times.
I could not fucking believe it,man.
I was like these guys haveordered a hundred times from
(26:13):
live bearded.
It just blew me away.
And so Spencer and I sat downand we wrote each one of them a
Christmas card, just said thankyou.
You know, it took us severalhours each.
We divided it up, but these arethe things that most people are
not willing to do, and it isthe very small hinges that swing
the biggest doors.
That's why I say I'm not.
I've never viewed myself as likethis tactical genius in
(26:36):
marketing or some you know isalways up on the latest trend or
this or that.
I've just tried to focus on whatare the fundamentals of
building a business that's goingto be sustainable and how, you
know, in our space.
The one thing I think, now thatI've been doing this for for 13
years, the one thing that pissesme off is the idea of like how
you need to scale to the moon asquickly as possible, and
(26:58):
oftentimes the stories that aretold are the oh, they went from
zero to a hundred mil in 18months and you got to do what
they do and you got to try tomodel what their things are.
When those are the, the, theunicorns right, the 0.1%.
And the truth is most of thebusinesses are just growing
slowly or having the up and down, but trying to get there
(27:18):
long-term.
And so I think, just focusingon the long-term, the
fundamentals, and if you can bethe type of person that's
willing to do the things thatdon't scale, that actually
becomes a moat because yourcompetition won't do it.
They're looking for the easybutton and you do the hard work
and you win long-term, andthat's what, uh, that's what
we're doing and what we willcontinue to do.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
One of the things I've been talking about on the
podcast a lot.
I did a podcast with someonewho does a has a media mix
modeling company.
We were talking about people'sfunnels and people's top of
funnel specifically and I wasthinking about Facebook and to
me, facebook as a directresponse performance marketer,
facebook is top of funnelbecause you're getting new
customers.
But he was he sort of wasexplaining to me well, actually,
like Facebook, collapses thefunnel, it's the top, middle and
(27:58):
bottom of funnel, usually allin once in a lot of cases, and
that he's that more and morebrands I'm talking to are
thinking of more true top offunnel activities, whether that
be TV, whether that be organiccontent.
I think is a lot of it.
How do you think of your truetop of funnel for Live Bearded?
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Yeah, it's a great question and we're really trying
to redefine that this year.
To be truly like to just betruly honest about it.
I do agree with that idea thatFacebook collapses.
The funnel and we do.
You know our ads on Facebookare broad, wide, open and then
based on the frequency, we cantell kind of how Facebook is
optimizing the individual adcampaigns or ad sets based on
(28:37):
whether they're getting more top, middle or bottom.
But to answer your question,we're actually really thinking
this year of a top of funnelorganic content strategy.
We've never thought of it thatway before, but we've really
restructured our media team tothink about how do we create
content that is top of funnel,that's more shareable and more
humor or awareness driven.
(28:58):
Most of our contenthistorically has been more
middle or bottom of funnel to begrooming content and engaging
in more of a conversation.
So we're creating this newseries.
I'm actually really pumpedabout it.
I don't know if I should give itaway yet, but I'm going to give
you guys a sneak peek, since Ijust went to Australia.
Like we talked about once upona time, we had this idea of
creating a beard hunter campaign.
We dress up as an aussie kindof go out like like the down
(29:21):
under I think it's calledcrocodile hunter where they go
out.
There's like a movie about it.
Anyways, we filmed a couple ofpilots of the couple guys on the
team dressing up in safari gearand going out with like their
crazy australian accents andhunting beards, and we're going
on beard conservation missionsand we're giving out sample
packs and like trying to createcontent that's more shock and
(29:42):
awe, more still congruent withus, still branded, but kind of
more funny and witty, so we canget people to hit that share
button or send it in the DM to afriend and get that engagement.
And I think for us that's wherewe're focusing a lot of our
creative resources on how do weget more top of funnel awareness
organically across theplatforms.
(30:04):
And then obviously we'llamplify and boost those through
different types of campaigns.
But that's actually a majorchange that we've never had
before.
Everything has always been top,middle, bottom, all paid.
A lot of the content has justbeen to nurture the community
and create that relationship.
So in a lot of ways we're goinginto uncharted territory for
ourself.
But I got a great team and I'mexcited to see what they put
together.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
I think that person on the street approach is is.
I was just talking with theguys my friend at rottencom and
he's he's starting a serieswhere they're having people go
out and and and sort of like afear factor type situation where
they're having people eatrandom things and I just feel
like that opportunity youmentioned you know the reasons
you're doing it Like one of thebig reasons is it's also that's
how people consume content.
(30:44):
They may not consume longerform.
Some people will watch beardgrooming for hours I'm sure I've
watched a few.
But if you can get into thatunexpected sort of funny content
, you can just tap so much ofthat organic algorithm which is
what everyone's kind of lookingfor in terms of discovery, right
yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Yeah, it's almost like I'm thinking about content
like a lot of very similar tohow we think of.
You know you would firstgenerate a lead, then you would
indoctrinate them a shortmessage in the beginning, longer
message and then ultimately theconversion.
I think for us it's like how dowe create these short, funny
viral type videos at the top offunnel but are driving them to
consume more content in a midform and then longer form
(31:22):
content Cause now we have apodcast and we have some other
series is that we're bringingout, and so it's almost like
we're building a content funnel.
Short is where they starttrying to get them to consume
the medium kind of mids, andthen ultimately long form, and
that's building the relationship.
And then we let them determinewhere along the way they want to
buy the sample pack, enter thegiveaway, come into our
ecosystem as a potentialprospect, and then we convert
(31:44):
them from there.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Sounds intelligent.
I like the sound of this.
Uh, what if we gave you ahundred thousand dollars?
Where would you use it rightnow?
Speaker 1 (31:52):
That's a great question I'd invest into my team
.
The one thing I've learned, man, is the talent that you put
around you.
It's the biggest investmentyou'll ever have as an
entrepreneur.
And it's interesting I nevergot into business as an
entrepreneur because I wanted tobuild a team or have a company
or sit in an office in awarehouse.
It was the exact opposite,actually, I wanted to be an
(32:13):
affiliate, working on my laptopon any beach, and I didn't want
to talk to anybody.
I didn't want to talk to Fastforward to today, the power that
you get from one great hire.
It's unbelievable the valuethat they add to the brand, and
so, without a shadow of a doubt,I would try to go find someone
who's like a true killer intheir role to fulfill a gap that
you have in the business andinvest into their expertise and
(32:35):
their intelligence so they canhelp you bridge the gap and get
the company to the next level.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
I love it and the same thing unfortunately is true
of people who aren't always at.
If you've got the wrong kind ofperson in the wrong role, the
effect can be negative, can bequite negative.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
For sure.
I think uh, you know it's oftensaid that customers are the most
important thing, and I thinkit's absolutely wrong.
I think your internal employeesand your team is the most
important thing in that culturethat you create and that you
foster, because from there, like, we're the ones that are
pouring out external, from theinternal nucleus of the company,
and you know we've had a coupleof people along the way that we
(33:11):
made the wrong decision.
I think, man, hiring the rightpeople is probably the most
challenging skill to learn, asyou're a growing business
because you need help, thingsare growing, you're already
running in multiple differentdirections and then you're
trying to find someone that's agood fit with skills and
competency.
Early on, we just hired anybodythat was like a good fit for
(33:31):
the brand, they were a goodculture fit and we're like we'll
train skills.
But there's an inflection pointin the business and for us it
was right around that eight to10 million where we were like we
can no longer afford to trainsomeone.
We need to bring in trueexperts and true professionals
that already have the experienceso we can condense time and
move faster.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Sounds awesome.
What are your plans for 2024?
Like, do you have anything bigon the calendar that you're
you're playing?
I guess your content, your,your product launches are all
planned out for the year.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
Yeah, all of the products, uh, all the like, yeah
, all the stuff we have.
Now we've we've gotten verygood at being less reactive, so
all that stuff's mapped out.
I would say probably ourbiggest thing is we've been
working on a rebrand for a yearand a half.
So, top to bottom new logos,new websites, new packaging, new
everything that's been.
We hired this fancy developmentor design agency December of 22
(34:21):
.
And here we are, january of 24.
And it's just been a longprocess.
Our target date is Black Friday, to kind of like all new things
.
So that's very, very exciting.
It's just kind of refreshingthe brand, making it you, making
it live bearded 2.0, if youwill.
So that's super exciting.
Trying to hire a really amazingemail marketer I've done most of
(34:43):
it for the whole time and thenI handed it off to one of my
marketing guys.
But we really it's such avaluable channel.
It's the highest ROI channel wehave.
I'm trying to find someonewho's a killer at email.
That is just, you know, got alot of experience.
So we're hiring for that rightnow.
But I would say the number onepriority is is, yeah, doubling
down on organic content, reallylearning how to craft shorts and
(35:05):
script videos in that medium,that will get a lot of
visibility and awareness,building a couple of new funnels
and then just doing the boringstuff.
I feel like whenever I do oneof these, I feel like, man, I'm
just talking about boring shit.
I don't have any like whiz bangidea, so I don't know how much
value it's going to be.
But I think just keeping yourfocus and executing on the
(35:28):
fundamentals ultimately gets youwhere you want to go.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
It's the energy.
You have a great energy and Ithink it's funny.
I've talked to a bunch ofpeople who've come on the
podcast, who were listening tothe podcast when we started, and
I've had more than one peopletell me that it's just so much
of it is just about seeing, ifyou know, people are
aspirational listening to thisright now.
So much of it is just seeingpeople doing it themselves and I
think your, your approach isrefreshing in that regard.
(35:51):
It doesn't have to be thesemoments of genius, it has to be
thorough, well thought out.
You know, daily activity,basically, it's not.
It's not a it doesn't.
You don't have to get itperfect, you just have to keep
going at it.
What Seth Rogen says, like ifyou, if you keep trying, you
might make it.
If you quit, you definitelywon't.
Uh, that's basically wherewe're at.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
You know, the one thing that I've learned is
there's always going to be fear,there's always going to be
doubt.
You're always going to wonderif you're going to be able to
repeat the campaign.
You know we had anextraordinary Black Friday and I
was like holy shit, like we'renever going to be able to like
duplicate this type of day, youknow.
But then you do the work,you've practiced the
fundamentals, you build the list, you nurture the community and
(36:30):
then you do it again and, again,and again.
And I think the one thing thatI've learned is you know
execution over time will beateverything else.
It'll be every strategy, everytactic, every competitor.
Um, but the the hardest part,honestly and this is the part
that we all have to battle withas entrepreneurs is just staying
consistent and showing up everyday and not getting bored.
(36:52):
You know I did.
Uh, do you guys know?
Do you know Perry Belcher?
Speaker 2 (36:55):
I love that guy.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
He's great so we paid him his consulting fee for a
day to help us with acquisitiona couple of years ago and we
were digging through like allthe things that we had done and
what was working.
And I remember we were doing,we had our Facebook group and we
were doing all this nurturingand we had this like really
vibrant community.
Long story short, some thingschanged and he just said to me
I'll never forget, he goes yeah,it sounds like it worked so
(37:19):
well.
You stopped doing it.
Do you just hate making money?
And and I was just like, uh,like what do you say to that?
It's like it sounds like itworks so well.
You stopped doing it.
You must hate making money.
And it was such, such like akick in the dick in the best
possible way, because it justreinforced the fundamentals, bro
, like we got away from thefundamentals because we were
(37:41):
trying to chase some newstrategy or do something
different and you know itprobably cost us a lot of time
and opportunity and so justtrying to pull our focus back,
you know it's like stayingfocused, staying disciplined and
actually giving a shit aboutyour customers and I think
that's the superpower inbusiness.
After doing this for a while, Ithink very few people can stay
(38:01):
consistent over time, and if youcan do that, you're going to
win the race.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
The other thing you mentioned a couple of times I
think is critical.
A lot of the best entrepreneursthat I've seen they're willing
to get out of their comfort zonea little bit and go to these
type of events.
Where you're connecting withthe Perry Belchers, where you're
connecting with the EzraFirestones, where you're
connecting with these otherpeople that are going through
what you're going through andcan say something that to anyone
else might sound like not thatimportant but it hits you in
(38:26):
this exact right way becausethey've been there.
Can you talk a little bit abouthow you view those kind of
excursions you take?
Speaker 1 (38:32):
Yeah, I can tell you very candidly, the only reason
why we're having a conversationis because I've invested at
every chance I get intoconnections, networks and my
education.
You know, when I started as anaffiliate, I was a scared, broke
kid who didn't have any money,no knowledge and no contacts,
because it was 2009 and no onewas doing this shit.
And since then I've calculatedit up I've invested over half a
(38:54):
million dollars into books,training courses, seminars,
mastermind groups, personalcoaching, mentorship.
The only way to shortcut theroad ahead is to go to someone
who has already done it and paythem to teach you what to do.
And so I think the mostimportant thing any entrepreneur
could do is get around otherentrepreneurs who are where they
(39:14):
want to be or who have alreadydone and solved the problem that
they're trying to solve.
You know, said another way, wenever have a how problem.
It's always a who problem.
Who do we need to talk to orwho do we need to become in
order to bridge the gap fromwhere we are to where we want to
go?
I know, like my model it's funnymy assistant Regina.
She kind of teases me at timesbecause she's like you, think
(39:35):
everybody can just go to aconference and like learn skills
and implement, and I'm like,well, that's my model of the
world, like that's all I've everdone.
I just went to conferences, Ilearned shit and I implemented
and over the course of 13 years,we've now done $50 million in
sales, we've generated a lot ofbusiness, we've got a vibrant
community and it literallystarted from connecting at
conferences, reading books,going to seminars, and we're so
(40:02):
blessed to live in a world wherethere's so much free shit out
there and we have access toalmost anything online at this
point in time, and sometimes youjust got to pony up and pay to
join someone's group or pay fora day consulting.
If you're learning through it,the value is exponential and now
you're that guy.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Now you're that you.
You you wanted to be that guyand you became that guy.
I think I think there's a lotof people you may.
I hope you get some reach outsfrom this.
I think I think some peoplewill want where.
Where should people find you ifthey if they want to reach out
on LinkedIn or Twitter?
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Yeah, I think honestly, I'm on Instagram most
of the time.
Um, I'm actually.
I have my website'santhonyminkcom, if you wanna
join the newsletter there.
I have a podcast coming out ina couple of weeks actually.
It's called Entitled to Nothingand there's gonna be a part of
it that's all about mindset andlike the lessons that we've
learned on the journey.
And then there's gonna be apart of it that's kind of about
(40:49):
like business mindset andexecutive leadership and things
like that, where we dointerviews with other business
owners.
Like that, where we dointerviews with other business
owners but Anthony Mink onInstagram, twitter, youtube and
then anthonyminkcom.
And yeah, I'd love if anybodyhas a specific question.
(41:10):
You know, I run my businessevery day because I love doing
it.
I love the game.
I think that entrepreneurshipis the game of life.
You know, every like everythingthat we experienced today is
sold from someone to someone forsomething, and that's what
makes the world go round.
And the way that you win thegame of business is by finding
ways to add more value to yourcustomers than any of your
competitors can, and if we canplay that game and constantly
(41:31):
get better at adding value andfiguring out the ways to meet
the needs of our customersbetter than anybody else can.
We're always going to win, andnow that I've kind of got to a
point in my career where youknow I have a message and some
things that I would like toshare.
I remember what it was like whenI was getting started and I was
just a scared, broke kid anddidn't know who to talk to or no
contacts.
(41:51):
And if there's anything I cando to support entrepreneurs on
their journey, yeah, pleasereach out, connect with me on
Instagram.
I'd love to help any way I can.
And dude, it's.
I just got to say it's apleasure to be on here.
I think, again, you guys arethe one of the you know premier
DTC podcasts.
I have implemented stuff fromsome of your early episodes when
I was still in the weedsrunning ads and doing things
(42:11):
multiple years ago that weregame changing for us.
That really helped us crack anew funnel or optimize an ad or
do something.
So the value you guys haveadded to this community is
absolute and it's a pleasure tobe here, and everybody listening
should definitely listen towhat you guys say and the
tactics and skills that you putout.
You guys are great.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Thanks, anthony.
Yeah, I really appreciate thatand I feel really privileged to
be in a position to be able toput out the value that we put
out and to connect with allthese on-fire entrepreneurs who
are putting out the same value.
And also like putting out thatvalue, like the fact that I've
got like three people on my teamwho make really good money I've
got you know, we pay people onour team well like the fact that
I'm in a position to build abusiness where I can help other
(42:52):
people have great lives and livethe kind of lives that they
want to live as well is such anincredibly rewarding feeling.
It makes me realize, like howdid capitalism go so wrong at
like the super high scales andall the weird ways we're seeing
it rot in the world, where, likewhen?
When I see it on a person toperson basis, I just see people
like adding value to their localsystems, to their, to their
(43:12):
families, to their, to theirclients, like just more of this,
and I feel like we can.
We can, we can win this thing.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
A hundred percent agree.
It's funny you say that we justtook speaking about education.
I just took seven people frommy team to traffic and
conversion summit.
Most of them it was the firsttime they ever went to a
conference.
And I had this moment where wewere out to dinner and I was
like, holy shit, I used to be atthis conference, scared, not
(43:40):
making any money, not sure ifI'd ever figure it out.
And now I have this incredible,vibrant team of people and it
was this kind of full circlemoment where it was just to your
point of feeling so grateful tobe able to provide those types
of opportunities and createthese things.
And it's again, it's just madepossible by execution over time.
But on the capitalism front, Ibelieve capitalism is the
greatest system for elevatingpeople to prosperity that has
ever existed on the face of theearth.
What I believe is we've nowentered into an age of almost
(44:02):
absolute transparency.
At this point in time in ourworld, you can't fuck anybody
for too long before you're foundout about, and the more
transparency we have, the morethat the market is going to
demand that the companies alignwith their values, and I think
we're already seeing this in abig way where consumers are
(44:22):
saying that the value of thecompany that they shop for is
one of the very first indicatorswhy they're shopping there.
And so I think it's upon all ofus as entrepreneurs, as
business owners, to get very,very clear on the culture we
want to create internally, onthe values that we want to
operate by, and project thosevalues out and draw a line in
the sand and say this is who weare, this is who we're for and
(44:44):
this is who we stand against.
And you don't have to do it ina disrespectful way, but you
just do it very as a matter offact.
And there's companies like that.
That.
Those are the companies, Ithink, that are going to lead
the capitalism revolution to thenext level and going to really
redefine how business is doneand bring a lot of that soul
back into it.
And that's that's what I'm mostexcited about.
That's what we're trying to dohere, and I hope that's what all
(45:06):
these listeners out there aregoing to do as well.
They're going to get reallyclear on how to bring soul back
into their business byvalue-driven cultures and
communities, and with that, mansky's the limit.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
I follow this guy on TikTok that I really enjoy.
He's called Cancel thisClothing Company and all he does
is break down his grocery storeshelves and show you which
brands are mom and pop operatedor family operated and which are
owned by BlackRock.
Essentially, right, and it'sjust like red, red, red, it's
BlackRock, blackrock, and thenthere's like two or three
products down there Red, red,red.
It's BlackRock, blackrock, andthen there's like two or three
products down there.
And it made me realize.
(45:38):
Like you know, you go back towhat Shopify said originally arm
the rebels.
Right, that's what.
That's what Shopify's missionwas to was to arm the rebels,
and I feel like that's whatthat's.
You know, you're a rebel, we're, we're helping arm the rebels
on the DTC side as well.
And it's interesting, like Ithink.
I think I can say I'm firmly onthe on the side of the little
(45:59):
guy in this case.
Right, like the more, becausethose are the people that are
going to be concentrated more onbringing value to their
ecosystems than these megalithic, you know, blackrock companies.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more.
You know, and I think I think weall have a vote with our dollar
and how we spend that dollar isa vote that we're making every
day, and I think we should allbring awareness to like where
we're getting our stuff and howwe can support brands that that
support what we care about.
And you know, one of the one ofthe number one selling points
(46:29):
for Live Bearded is made inAmerica and we've made a very
big point to manufacture all ofour grooming products right here
and to tell our tribe about it.
And when we survey audience,what's one of the number one
reasons why you buy from us, orwhat are the number one reasons
why you buy from us?
It's always the quality of theproduct, number one, and then
number two is made in America,and so we use that right, we
(46:50):
plant that flag, and I love thefact that we have all these
disruptive, young, scrappyrebels in the entrepreneurial
community that have theopportunity to go out there and
re-inject that soul, thatculture back into the world and
really redefine again fromlegacy capitalism and big brands
(47:14):
and kind of the way that theyused to do things to the way we
can lead the charge and doingthings in a more holistic and
improved way.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
Easy, right, easy.
Well, uh, Anthony, we're goingto have to stay in touch.
I think we're going to have todo we're gonna have to do at
least annual podcast to uh tokeep up.
Here we can keep our beardprogress.
I'm just going to let mine go.
He's going to get really justlong.
It's not super thick, but I'mloving it.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
Hit me up, I'll send you whatever you need.
Bro, it's a pleasure I reallymean it, man.
It's a pleasure to come on hereand what you guys have done.
You've added a lot of value tomy life in terms of actionable
steps that turn into revenue,and if there's anything I can do
to support your community, Iwould love to do it.
I'd love to stay in touch.
Definitely got to get thatsnowboarding trip up in Whistler
(47:55):
you were talking about.
I'm in we're doing it, I'm goingto win and yeah, let me know
how I can support and let'sdefinitely stay in touch.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
Awesome Thanks, anthony, this is great.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
All right, brother, talk to you soon.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.
If you're not a subscriber toour newsletter, you can do that
right now atdirecttoconsumerallonewordco.
I'm Eric Dick and this has beenthe DTC Podcast.
We'll see you next time.
Welcome to Entitled to Nothing, where we believe our
life is our fault.
My name is Mink and today I'vegot the privilege to share a
special episode with you guys.
I was recently interviewed onthe D2C podcast, and if you're
in the marketing community, ifyou're an entrepreneur or you
work online, I'm sure you'veheard of the D2C podcast.
They're one of the best onesout there, bringing amazing
(00:22):
insights and strategies and waysto grow and build our
businesses.
So I wanted to bring thispodcast here and share it with
you guys.
I sat down with Eric.
We had an incredibleconversation about all things
business.
We talked about thefundamentals of business, what
I'm doing at Live Bearded togrow in 2024, and ultimately,
how, as a business owner, thegreatest thing we can do is
(00:45):
serve the community that wesupport, and so if you're a
business owner, if you're anentrepreneur or if you want to
start a business, I recommendthis podcast for you guys.
I think you'll love theconversation that we had.
We had a lot of fun and I thinkyou'll get some value from it.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
All the plans for the year and, yeah, we're excited
about big things and this yearwas good too, like this.
It was a struggle this year,like it definitely was harder in
2023 and 20 than it was in 2022for us.
Yeah, but uh made a lot of goodprogress, so nice man.
Do you guys use any specificframework like eos or scaling up
or we, we've been trying to useeos like on and off for years
(01:21):
and we're kind of using it andkind of not using it, like we're
definitely getting some.
We now we haven't.
We have a daily standup and wehave our L10s, okay, um, but the
goal with this would, now thatwe have this like year long kind
of objective across all thedifferent departments is to
implement it a little bit better, do you guys?
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah, so we started using it last year.
We like had our leader, we weset a leadership team, had
everybody read it, started theprocess and then about halfway
through the year, I hired anamazing executive assistant who
was really, really experiencedin EOS itself.
So she just transformed ourability to implement it, like
use the tools better, held usaccountable.
So we do L10s in everydepartment now, like, the
(02:00):
leadership person in thatdepartment assigns rocks to
their team.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
So it's still you know, we're a year in, so it's
still new, but it's been very,very helpful for us for sure I
think you said it there like youkind of you almost you need
that implementer, though youkind of need the person whose
like job it is to like geteveryone on track with it right,
because it's hard when you'vegot your team doing all this
stuff and then on top of ityou're like, okay, take on this
(02:24):
whole new structure.
Like having that other personhelping be accountable for it
helps so much.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
As founders.
It's like you're trying tolearn enough and implement
enough at once to then try tolike, bring in this system and
figure out the tools and do allthe things.
So we just got really lucky.
Honestly, regina had learned itfrom a previous opportunity
that she worked in, so it was uh, it was awesome.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Very cool.
Well, let's just start thispodcast with some EOS banter, I
think.
That's like.
I think half the half of thepodcast listeners probably are
thinking about implementing thator not.
It's definitely definitelysuper helpful.
Um, but, anthony, welcome tothe podcast.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Thanks, bro.
It's a pleasure to be here, man.
I've been listening to thepodcast ever since it came out.
I well, it's like three or fouryears now.
Right, it's been a while.
Lots of amazing tips along theway, so it's a pleasure to be
here.
I feel like you guys aredefinitely one of the best in
the space and it's an honor toget on here and chop it up and
hopefully connect with somelisteners and share a few things
along the way.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
You are also another one of the gift that keeps on
giving from Carly Craig.
Carly Craig just continuallyintroduces me to new people in
the industry.
Like you got to have Anthony onthe podcast I think you got.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
maybe you met at the blue ribbon mastermind or at
some sort of a businessmastermind in Puerto Rico at
blue ribbon and then just yeah,obviously connected.
She's amazing.
She's also introduced me to afew other people in the space,
so I feel like she's one ofthose just like super connectors
in the space, but an incrediblehuman for sure.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Nice, Okay, Take me, take me to the beginning of.
You know I've been following,you know, multiple beer brands
in this DTC space since I kindof came into it in in 2016,.
Some have hit it big, Some havefallen by the wayside.
Live Bearded is just continuingto grow steadily.
Talk about your journey alittle bit.
How did it get started?
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Yeah, I mean my.
My personal journey started allthe way back in 2009.
I worked a bunch of bullshitjobs I hated and ultimately got
to a place where I decided Iwanted to be able to make money
online so I could travel, and Ithink I was a little bit ahead
of my time, you know, trying tofigure out how to make money
online in 2009, 2010.
Ultimately, I taught myselfFacebook ads, which obviously
(04:20):
you know you guys are theexperts at.
Learned how to buy traffic backin 2011.
Spent five years in theaffiliate space, driving leads,
building lists, selling otherpeople's shit and sold a couple
businesses, built a couple thatfailed.
Ultimately, that led me to kindof no-shave, november 2015.
And one of my best friends,spencer.
We've known each other for 18years.
(04:40):
At this point he was growingout his first beard and we
always talked about workingtogether, maybe figuring out a
way to start a business that waskind of built around men and
community and things like that.
Uh, he was like, have you everthought about starting a beard
company?
And I was like I didn't evenhave a beard.
It was like stubble.
And I was like no, I haven'tthought about it.
But the conversation continuedand I went on to Alibaba.
I bought 500 wood combs.
(05:02):
I got had a like a Fiverrdesigner make a live bearded
logo.
We stamped it on there and Iwas like, let's see if we can
sell some fucking beard combs.
Long story short, I set up afree plus shipping offer to see
if we could sell 500 combs, setup a Facebook funnel and we sold
all of them in the first day.
And and then we had to figureout how to fricking send out 500
combs, cause we weren'texpecting that.
So we went to like OfficeMax,figured out, bought the shipping
(05:25):
stuff.
The rest is history.
We went from you know, the ideaof a free plus shipping offer
to.
We ended up doing about 10,000customers in the first year, and
the purpose of those firstcustomers was let's just build
as many like, let's invite asmany people into a Facebook
group as possible and let'sconnect with them and get to
know what they like, what theydon't want, what they need, what
(05:45):
products they're using, and so,rather than just diving into
manufacturing out of the gateand going all in, we really kind
of did a minimum viable productapproach.
We did the beard combs.
We had a couple other productsthat we like got made in China
just to try to get new customersinto the funnel that were
grooming related.
And then ultimately we startedsurveying our audience and they
(06:06):
told us exactly what productsthey used, what they liked, what
they didn't like, and then thatultimately led to us developing
our own line of custom beardproducts.
We launched the website kind ofend of 2016.
And, uh, you know, we've reallyhad growth 45, 40 to 45% growth
kind of year over year.
Since then.
And you know you mentioned alot of businesses have kind of
(06:28):
come and gone.
Businesses like the Beard Clubskyrocketed out of nowhere to a
million dollars a month almostovernight.
You know Beard brand has been apillar in the space since 2012.
So there's these companies thathave been around, but you know,
for us we really just focusedon how do we build a brand, how
do we connect with our communityand how do we build a business
(06:49):
that is going to be asustainable, long-term in.
In my affiliate days I builtthis entire seven figure
business on the back of Facebookpages and Facebook ads and in a
day they changed theiralgorithm.
Reach went down.
Then in another day, changedtheir algorithm reach went down.
Then in another day theychanged their algorithm.
Reach went down and I went frommaking seven figures a month as
an affiliate living the fuckingdream to basically making no
(07:13):
money and needing to start allthe way over, and so I realized
very quickly the worst number inbusiness is one, and we decided
with Live Bearded, we're goingto have a very diversified,
long-term approach to thebusiness, and it was really
focused on how do we fostercommunity and culture, and today
I'm proud to say I think one ofthe best aspects of our brand
is nearly 50% of all of ourrevenue is repeat customer.
(07:34):
So we've really nailed theretention, we've nailed the
community and ultimately, that'sjust been built on this idea of
how do we actually give a damnabout our customer and go out of
our way to make sure they havethe best customer experience
possible.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
It's the best of both worlds.
You know I'm an affiliate.
I was.
I started in 2009 slinginge-cards and dating subscriptions
and all sorts of things on.
Google and yeah, it was, and Iremember, I remember in 2009,.
I'm like, why imagine allagencies spent like we spent,
and as opposed to spraying andpraying or whatever, and you
know we're changing buttoncolors and we're making sure the
(08:08):
funnel is congruent at everystep.
And I came up all throughaffiliate marketing and then I
really was there in 2016, 2017,when all these affiliates were
having the same experience.
You were where they were havingtheir legs taken out from under
them with for from differentpolicy changes and this, and
that with nothing left to standon because they weren't really
bringing anything to theequation except the marketing
know-how.
And so when you can combine thefact like the way you got into
(08:30):
the product you know was sosmart by de-risking yourself
with you know your products,finding your product market fit
or anything, so it's very I knewit was going to be dangerous
when affiliates started gettingserious about building lasting
businesses, because they alsohave that scrappy skillset to be
able to get up a funnel andmake sure it works and then, and
then when it does work, theyare able to they're confident to
put, put the volume down andgrow it too, right.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Yeah, I think you're.
You're spot on.
I mean, I think the mostimportant skill in business is
knowing how to make a sale right.
There's, like every, all thesedifferent skills that you need,
but one of my, one of my firstmentors his name's Joe Polish.
He's a legend in the space, Um.
I randomly met him at the gym.
We became friends.
I did some like work for himfor free, just to learn and be
(09:12):
in the environment, and one ofthe first lessons he told me is
he's like Anthony, your numberone job as an entrepreneur is
you have to learn how to make asale so that you can pay for all
the mistakes that you're goingto make until you learn how to
actually be a successfulbusiness owner.
And I think to your point, ifthe affiliates or if someone
goes out and cuts their teeth inpaid media or social media or
(09:34):
content or whatever thatskillset is that can generate
visibility.
Today you know we've seen a lotof businesses in our industry
come and go, as you mentioned,and a lot of it is because they
just didn't have the skills tomaintain visibility.
Maybe they had an opportunitywith an algorithm or a specific
media channel, but as thoseevolve and change, if you're not
(09:55):
balanced, you really dostruggle.
Again, that's been somethingthat we've been very intentional
with, and for anybody out therewho's in the game, who's on the
journey, the number one adviceI could give you from an
amplification or awarenessstandpoint is you have to build
multiple channels of visibilityor traffic so that when changes
happen, when freaking updates,iOS updates take place like I
(10:18):
feel like every year, there'sanother big challenge.
I know this year there's abunch of stuff going on with
email and it's happening to allof us, but it happens to you.
It affects you less if you dothe effort required to build a
multidimensional traffic funneland awareness system naturally,
(10:44):
which is really connect withyour customers, really
understand their problems and bereally reflexive.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
You know, a lot of affiliate marketing is just
about the offer and you hammerthe offer as hard as you can and
then you find another offer,kind of thing.
But you've kind of built thelegs on the stool along with
your distribution system to havethis strong community, this
responsive community.
Your beard's good, yourco-founder's beard, is out of
this world.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
I think that's the other essential thing is you've
got a good beard, but he'sgenuinely one of the best guys I
know, amazing human and I'vebeen.
I've been privileged to workwith him for the last you know,
eight years on this project, butbe friends for 18.
And you know, the one thingthat I learned through just luck
, honestly, is Spence and I havevery different skill sets.
He's an implementer right, wewere using EOS framework
(11:41):
language earlier.
He is the integrator, like itperfectly, and I'm the visionary
perfectly.
And what's great about that isI'm the idea guy, I'm the
visionary, I'm thinking aboutstrategy, I can do the
optimization of funnels, testnew things, but long term, he's
the guy that goes to the teamand executes it.
So the balance between us isanother one of those luck in
(12:02):
some ways, but but also likerealizing that that was the case
over time.
We really leaned into that andelevated each other in our own
like best skill sets.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Let's go back to tactics for a second.
You mentioned that you launchedthe biz with free plus shipping
and I remember that wasespecially back then.
That was, that was the mode toget your product out there, to
get that first sale, to buildwhat's working today, what's
working today in your directmarketing efforts that gets you
into the hands of the customermost effectively.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
It's a great question and honestly, I don't feel like
we have any one channel that isjust crushing it.
I think it's just consistentover time.
You know, we've really focusedon the fundamentals.
So, you know, email generateshalf of our revenue.
You know, anywhere from like 40to 50%.
We do a lot of seasonallaunches and new products and
fragrances.
So I think, from a retentionstandpoint, you know, in
(12:53):
e-commerce once you acquire themwhich typically that's the most
difficult thing to do you'vegot to have a way to send them.
And so we've built a seasonallaunch model where we have a
limited number of products everyquarter that go out.
They're unique in fragrance andthere's true scarcity, there's
true exclusivity and they sellout almost immediately.
And so, from a marketingstandpoint like I never realized
(13:15):
the power of true scarcity andtrue exclusivity until we
actually had it, and when it'swhen it is true and you're not,
you know, doing the funny tricksthat a lot of brands do it's
incredible the impact that ithas on the business.
So that's a that's a huge thingfor us, but in terms of just
generating business, all of ourwe have two main funnels.
The first one is a samplefunnel for us, but in terms of
just generating business, all ofour.
(13:36):
We have two main funnels.
The first one is a samplefunnel for us and we built it in
a way for any listener outthere that wants to go take a
look at it, dissect it.
You can go to livebeardedcomforward slash sample and that's
a page I've painstakinglyoptimized.
Over a year and a half we tookthe conversion rate from four to
5% up to 13% on cold traffic,and that's by really dialing in
(14:00):
the offer, figuring out whatbonuses we can give away to
stack value, but then alsoreally working on the creative.
All of our ads run on Facebook,instagram, youtube.
We haven't really figured outhow to crack the TikTok.
We've played with it a littlebit, but that hasn't worked so
well.
And then yesterday, actually, Iwas just meeting with my
marketing team and we weredissecting.
We have a giveaway funnel.
(14:20):
We've been running this damngiveaway forever and I was
always like I don't know aboutthe true value that it adds.
We know it adds some value.
We generate new leads everymonth but I could never quantify
it.
And I'll be the first to tellyou I'm not a data analyst.
I'm pretty weak when it comesto extrapolating like deep
customer journey value.
But we brought a fact offractional CMO in to really help
(14:44):
with that and he was dissectingit for us and he was like I
think these giveaway guys aremaybe some of the best new
customers you get and, um, it'sreally amazing because the setup
if you guys want to look atthat funnel again, I'm here to
just help.
Any way I can go tolivebeardedcom forward slash
giveaway.
You do have to opt in, but Iwould recommend it.
(15:04):
Don't buy the shit unless yougot a beard.
But you can see our followupsequence, you can see the thank
you page.
But basically what we're doingis we're taking them from a
giveaway where we're giving awayhundreds of dollars of product
every month and making them animmediate offer and then making
them multiple offers over thecourse of a week and then we
drop them into our nurturesequence.
Those are our two main offersand that really brings in all of
(15:25):
our new leads and all of ournew customers.
One of our biggest quarterly andannual rocks this year is
actually to build a couple ofnew acquisition offers because
we want to be able to scale morehorizontally.
But I've got a full creativeteam.
I've got four guys in thecontent department.
We've got three full-timevideographers a creative
director, a script writer and sowe're spending a lot of time
(15:48):
trying to create scripted videos.
We actually went through theHarmon Brothers training my
content team did a few years agoand then we brought someone
over.
We brought someone over fromChamber Media, if you know who
those guys are, and we tried to-.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Yeah, I want to go stay at his hotels in Utah.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Yeah, someone just sent me that in Instagram.
It looks super crazy.
But to answer your question ina long-winded form, I mean
really we don't have anythingthat's fancy, we're just
focusing on the fundamentals.
Like I talked about um, we'vegot a great creative team in
house, so we generate a lot ofcreative.
We do a lot of YouTube stuff.
We launched a podcast to justnurture the community.
(16:25):
We email three or four times aweek mostly content, do the
quarterly promotions, launch newproducts as often as we can.
So we're we're really focusedon how can we add value to the
community.
And then how can we?
I think that like new,something new, whether it's a
new label, a new version, a newfragrance, whatever it is.
We found that there's just asuperpower in giving something
(16:49):
new to your community andthere's a large percentage of
them that are just going to comeback and rebuy.
So we just really tap into thatand then do everything we can
to make sure that the customeris having a good experience
along the way.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
You say fundamentals, but this is the fundamentals
from someone who's also done 10years of affiliate marketing, I
think in a way, I'm just goingback to the fact that you said
that your giveaway list, lookingthrough data, has actually
turned out to be one of yourmore valuable customer lists,
cause that's not generally thecase.
A lot of the times you getpeople coming in for giveaways
and they're just there for thefreebies, uh, and that's maybe
(17:21):
even what you were assuming, butthat you're not seeing that.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Yeah, so I can speak to it, uh, pretty specifically.
So we had we've tested a fewgiveaways that had nothing to do
with our products.
So we're like we should come upwith like this bad-ass man's
bundle.
And it was like we went out andspent like $500 on like axes
and backpacks and camping gearand it was going to be like this
cool, like rugged bug out bagtype thing where you've got all
this cool stuff and we got thecheapest leads we've ever got
(17:47):
and they didn't buy shit.
It was terrible, um, but whenwe give away stuff, that's maybe
less sexy, but it's our product.
So every day we're giving away abeard oil, every week we're
giving away a grooming kit, andthen every month we have this
like grand prize.
It's like $350 worth of value,I think.
It's like six months worth ofproduct, our electric trimmer,
(18:08):
et cetera.
So it's so specific to ourproducts that people that are
going to apply have a actualinterest in the products
themselves, and I think that's abig distinction.
If you have a brand and you'veran a giveaway but it didn't
work, the more congruent you cangive to your actual product,
the better, and I wouldrecommend, if it's possible, to
(18:29):
just give a.
You know, for us, obviouslyit's a consumable, it's a
cosmetic, so we can just give itaway through a giveaway and
then they'll come back and buyit if they like.
But finding something that is,you know, congruent or or an in
support of the product thatyou're using, I think is
critical.
And then just thinking about thepsychology of that type of a
(18:50):
lead, so we we capture theirlead and we send them to a page
and we're like, hey, buy now for25% off.
No one bought anything.
And I'm like, okay, well, theycame from free and I'm trying to
give them a discount.
What if they come from free andI give them free?
So then we started testing freeshit.
So it was like buy thisgrooming kit and get a free comb
(19:10):
or a free dog kit or a freeaccessory, and then ultimately,
the more value we can stack asthe free gift, the higher that
conversion rate is going to go.
And so what we found was we getpretty cheap leads on the
giveaway and a pretty greatconversion rate on the thank you
page.
But the psychology is the same.
They're entering for free shitand then it's like, hey, well,
(19:31):
we'll give you more free shit,but you're going to have to
spend something this time andyou can see the current offer
that we're working on thatgiveaway flow, like I told you.
But I think it comes down tothe psychology and making sure
that you're not just trying togive away something sexy and get
cheap leads.
I think that's where you see somany of these co-opted giveaway
(19:53):
lists that used to be all overthe place in e-commerce.
Candidly, we never did any ofthose because of the psychology
behind it.
You want the best quality leads, not just the cheapest ones you
can get 100%.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
It makes me think.
Actually we were just lookingat in our editorial this meeting
about the Snoop Dogg campaign,the Snoop Dogg stove campaign.
So they launched nationallywith that huge I think it was
Wilk Stove or some some bigstove company.
With that, that Snoop is goingsmokeless and it got national
coverage and it got like it hadso many eyeballs but it did not
move the needle for them at alland they had to fire the.
(20:23):
CEO because he's an irrelevant,he's an incongruent person to
their core audience.
They just announced two oftheir new influencers are these,
you know, mid?
Not certainly not Snoop Dogg'slevel of fame, but they're much
more relevant.
They're outdoorsmen, they'rethey're people who cook outdoors
, kind of thing, and that's,that's their new strategy.
It's a lot more on brand, onfocus, congruent with what
they're actually trying to do.
Maybe everyone learned abouttheir brand, that brand name,
(20:45):
and maybe, who knows, down theroad, more and more people will
be like oh, that was the SnoopDogg joke brand, but it's not
really relevant.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Yeah, it's so.
I didn't realize the secondpart of that story.
I knew Snoop did the thing forthe solo stove and I saw the
massive amount.
Every fucking podcast Ilistened to business, political,
person, whatever they were alltalking about it.
But it's so true, right?
It doesn't matter how muchvisibility you get.
If you're trying to sellsomeone something, you've got to
have some intent, and so justawareness by itself isn't
(21:13):
necessarily always going to beworth it, in my opinion, and
you've got to be authentic asyou and if you're starting your
campaign with a lie.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
You know you're starting it with a trick, or how
we're tricking you.
He's going to smoke pot.
He's not going to smoke potanymore.
Yeah Right, uh.
But like that's also not a wayto build trust and authenticity,
and I guess that's where I gowith.
My next question is like whatdo you?
What have been the key stepsfor you guys?
I guess it's just been a littlebit of everything.
It's been the brand image, it'sbeen the product role.
How have you built thatconnection so well?
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Honestly, it's consistent effort over time and
it's probably the one thing I'mmost proud of.
I actually spoke at amastermind on Friday and one of
the guys in a Q&A session waslike hey, I went to your website
.
You have 60,000 five-starreviews.
How are you doing that?
Are you paying people?
Are you incentivizing them?
What's the deal here?
(22:01):
And I was like the deal is,we've been doing this for eight
years and we've worked our assoff to deliver on the promise,
to make sure that we are alwayscongruent with what we say.
If there's scarcity, there'strue scarcity.
We're not playing tricks.
We're not doing marketingtactics for a short-term benefit
.
I think we've been playing thelong game.
Even though in the beginning Iwasn't planning on keeping Liv
(22:23):
bearded for the long term, Ialways knew that I needed to
maintain the trust and theauthenticity with the brand, and
so I would just say one we wehave kind of Spencer and I have
really infused our personalityinto the company, both from a
value standpoint but how wespeak, and we've been ruthless
with never misleading ourcustomers, like we were just
(22:46):
talking about.
If there's scarcity, it's truescarcity.
If something's out of stock,like we don't play any funny
games, and then ultimately, wetry to have the most customer
focused centric return policy.
And in the details, like a lotof times, I'll give you an
example.
So, with customer service, weget a customer that buys a
product.
They don't like the fragrance.
(23:06):
They call in and they're likehey, you know, I don't like the
fragrance, can I swap it out?
Yeah, no problem, we got you.
What fragrance do you want?
We immediately send them thenew fragrance.
The next next question is well,do I have to send this one back
?
And we've trained our team tosay something to the effect of
you know what, brother, we don'twant you to have to deal with
going to the post office,packaging it up and sending it
back.
We can't do anything with itanyway, since you've already
(23:28):
used it.
So just do us a favor, give itto a friend, pass it on as a
gift and tell them about us, andthat right there has generated
so much excitement and authorityfor us.
They're in the book Contagious.
Jonah Berger says the best thingthat you can do is print social
currency and give yourcommunity a way to create social
(23:49):
currency for themselves.
And if we give you a productthat you pay for and you have
the opportunity to get adifferent one and then give the
one you didn't like to somebody.
We're giving you socialcurrency in your community.
My warehouse manager hisbrother did that to him, gave it
to him.
He fell in love with the brand,came on as a customer service
rep, became a customer servicemanager and now he leads our
(24:10):
entire warehouse and fulfillmentteam.
And so it's just doing theselittle things where we're truly
focusing on how do we buildrelationships every step of the
way?
How do we do the hard thinginstead of the easy thing?
Most people in our world todayare looking for the easy button
and they want as quick, theywant to make as much money off
their list as possible, theywant to get as much cash up
front as they can.
(24:30):
And I think if you can flip thescript and play the long game
and focus more on reputation,then you have the opportunity to
build a following of peoplethat just truly love you, and
that is the best asset of thebrand.
I mean I know every year we'regoing to generate eight plus
figures in revenue.
Half of that's going to be fromemail, half of that's going to
(24:51):
be from repeat customers.
That's going to be from repeatcustomers and we just have built
this ecosystem that willsustain, regardless of what
takes place in the marketplaceand how things go, and it comes
down to really like A we give ashit about our customers Boring
lame.
We've focused on the long termand we've just been consistent.
(25:11):
Over time.
I've heard it said that thelike a personal brand or a
business brand is really justthe digitization of reputation
and once you create thatreputation, it takes years to
create it, but you can torch itin a second.
You can burn it all down very,very quickly.
So we're just trying to alwaysbe cautious of how we represent
the brand and make sure thatwe're always acting within the
(25:33):
values of ourselves in thecommunity.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
You were talking before the holidays, when we had
our pre-interview, also aboutthings that don't scale as well,
where you're talking aboutliterally sending handwritten
notes to your best customersover Christmas, like that's a
perfect example of somethingyou're not going to see a
financial return from, but it'sthat like every day you write
the book, every day you kind ofbuild that, build those
relationships.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah, it's crazy.
I went into Shopify and Ididn't.
They added new features whereyou can do like a really easily
sort by like number of orders orvalue, value, total customer
value, and we have dozens ofcustomers that have ordered over
a hundred times.
I could not fucking believe it,man.
I was like these guys haveordered a hundred times from
(26:13):
live bearded.
It just blew me away.
And so Spencer and I sat downand we wrote each one of them a
Christmas card, just said thankyou.
You know, it took us severalhours each.
We divided it up, but these arethe things that most people are
not willing to do, and it isthe very small hinges that swing
the biggest doors.
That's why I say I'm not.
I've never viewed myself as likethis tactical genius in
(26:36):
marketing or some you know isalways up on the latest trend or
this or that.
I've just tried to focus on whatare the fundamentals of
building a business that's goingto be sustainable and how, you
know, in our space.
The one thing I think, now thatI've been doing this for for 13
years, the one thing that pissesme off is the idea of like how
you need to scale to the moon asquickly as possible, and
(26:58):
oftentimes the stories that aretold are the oh, they went from
zero to a hundred mil in 18months and you got to do what
they do and you got to try tomodel what their things are.
When those are the, the, theunicorns right, the 0.1%.
And the truth is most of thebusinesses are just growing
slowly or having the up and down, but trying to get there
(27:18):
long-term.
And so I think, just focusingon the long-term, the
fundamentals, and if you can bethe type of person that's
willing to do the things thatdon't scale, that actually
becomes a moat because yourcompetition won't do it.
They're looking for the easybutton and you do the hard work
and you win long-term, andthat's what, uh, that's what
we're doing and what we willcontinue to do.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
One of the things I've been talking about on the
podcast a lot.
I did a podcast with someonewho does a has a media mix
modeling company.
We were talking about people'sfunnels and people's top of
funnel specifically and I wasthinking about Facebook and to
me, facebook as a directresponse performance marketer,
facebook is top of funnelbecause you're getting new
customers.
But he was he sort of wasexplaining to me well, actually,
like Facebook, collapses thefunnel, it's the top, middle and
(27:58):
bottom of funnel, usually allin once in a lot of cases, and
that he's that more and morebrands I'm talking to are
thinking of more true top offunnel activities, whether that
be TV, whether that be organiccontent.
I think is a lot of it.
How do you think of your truetop of funnel for Live Bearded?
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Yeah, it's a great question and we're really trying
to redefine that this year.
To be truly like to just betruly honest about it.
I do agree with that idea thatFacebook collapses.
The funnel and we do.
You know our ads on Facebookare broad, wide, open and then
based on the frequency, we cantell kind of how Facebook is
optimizing the individual adcampaigns or ad sets based on
(28:37):
whether they're getting more top, middle or bottom.
But to answer your question,we're actually really thinking
this year of a top of funnelorganic content strategy.
We've never thought of it thatway before, but we've really
restructured our media team tothink about how do we create
content that is top of funnel,that's more shareable and more
humor or awareness driven.
(28:58):
Most of our contenthistorically has been more
middle or bottom of funnel to begrooming content and engaging
in more of a conversation.
So we're creating this newseries.
I'm actually really pumpedabout it.
I don't know if I should give itaway yet, but I'm going to give
you guys a sneak peek, since Ijust went to Australia.
Like we talked about once upona time, we had this idea of
creating a beard hunter campaign.
We dress up as an aussie kindof go out like like the down
(29:21):
under I think it's calledcrocodile hunter where they go
out.
There's like a movie about it.
Anyways, we filmed a couple ofpilots of the couple guys on the
team dressing up in safari gearand going out with like their
crazy australian accents andhunting beards, and we're going
on beard conservation missionsand we're giving out sample
packs and like trying to createcontent that's more shock and
(29:42):
awe, more still congruent withus, still branded, but kind of
more funny and witty, so we canget people to hit that share
button or send it in the DM to afriend and get that engagement.
And I think for us that's wherewe're focusing a lot of our
creative resources on how do weget more top of funnel awareness
organically across theplatforms.
(30:04):
And then obviously we'llamplify and boost those through
different types of campaigns.
But that's actually a majorchange that we've never had
before.
Everything has always been top,middle, bottom, all paid.
A lot of the content has justbeen to nurture the community
and create that relationship.
So in a lot of ways we're goinginto uncharted territory for
ourself.
But I got a great team and I'mexcited to see what they put
together.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
I think that person on the street approach is is.
I was just talking with theguys my friend at rottencom and
he's he's starting a serieswhere they're having people go
out and and and sort of like afear factor type situation where
they're having people eatrandom things and I just feel
like that opportunity youmentioned you know the reasons
you're doing it Like one of thebig reasons is it's also that's
how people consume content.
(30:44):
They may not consume longerform.
Some people will watch beardgrooming for hours I'm sure I've
watched a few.
But if you can get into thatunexpected sort of funny content
, you can just tap so much ofthat organic algorithm which is
what everyone's kind of lookingfor in terms of discovery, right
yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Yeah, it's almost like I'm thinking about content
like a lot of very similar tohow we think of.
You know you would firstgenerate a lead, then you would
indoctrinate them a shortmessage in the beginning, longer
message and then ultimately theconversion.
I think for us it's like how dowe create these short, funny
viral type videos at the top offunnel but are driving them to
consume more content in a midform and then longer form
(31:22):
content Cause now we have apodcast and we have some other
series is that we're bringingout, and so it's almost like
we're building a content funnel.
Short is where they starttrying to get them to consume
the medium kind of mids, andthen ultimately long form, and
that's building the relationship.
And then we let them determinewhere along the way they want to
buy the sample pack, enter thegiveaway, come into our
ecosystem as a potentialprospect, and then we convert
(31:44):
them from there.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Sounds intelligent.
I like the sound of this.
Uh, what if we gave you ahundred thousand dollars?
Where would you use it rightnow?
Speaker 1 (31:52):
That's a great question I'd invest into my team
.
The one thing I've learned, man, is the talent that you put
around you.
It's the biggest investmentyou'll ever have as an
entrepreneur.
And it's interesting I nevergot into business as an
entrepreneur because I wanted tobuild a team or have a company
or sit in an office in awarehouse.
It was the exact opposite,actually, I wanted to be an
(32:13):
affiliate, working on my laptopon any beach, and I didn't want
to talk to anybody.
I didn't want to talk to Fastforward to today, the power that
you get from one great hire.
It's unbelievable the valuethat they add to the brand, and
so, without a shadow of a doubt,I would try to go find someone
who's like a true killer intheir role to fulfill a gap that
you have in the business andinvest into their expertise and
(32:35):
their intelligence so they canhelp you bridge the gap and get
the company to the next level.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
I love it and the same thing unfortunately is true
of people who aren't always at.
If you've got the wrong kind ofperson in the wrong role, the
effect can be negative, can bequite negative.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
For sure.
I think uh, you know it's oftensaid that customers are the most
important thing, and I thinkit's absolutely wrong.
I think your internal employeesand your team is the most
important thing in that culturethat you create and that you
foster, because from there, like, we're the ones that are
pouring out external, from theinternal nucleus of the company,
and you know we've had a coupleof people along the way that we
(33:11):
made the wrong decision.
I think, man, hiring the rightpeople is probably the most
challenging skill to learn, asyou're a growing business
because you need help, thingsare growing, you're already
running in multiple differentdirections and then you're
trying to find someone that's agood fit with skills and
competency.
Early on, we just hired anybodythat was like a good fit for
(33:31):
the brand, they were a goodculture fit and we're like we'll
train skills.
But there's an inflection pointin the business and for us it
was right around that eight to10 million where we were like we
can no longer afford to trainsomeone.
We need to bring in trueexperts and true professionals
that already have the experienceso we can condense time and
move faster.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Sounds awesome.
What are your plans for 2024?
Like, do you have anything bigon the calendar that you're
you're playing?
I guess your content, your,your product launches are all
planned out for the year.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
Yeah, all of the products, uh, all the like, yeah
, all the stuff we have.
Now we've we've gotten verygood at being less reactive, so
all that stuff's mapped out.
I would say probably ourbiggest thing is we've been
working on a rebrand for a yearand a half.
So, top to bottom new logos,new websites, new packaging, new
everything that's been.
We hired this fancy developmentor design agency December of 22
(34:21):
.
And here we are, january of 24.
And it's just been a longprocess.
Our target date is Black Friday, to kind of like all new things
.
So that's very, very exciting.
It's just kind of refreshingthe brand, making it you, making
it live bearded 2.0, if youwill.
So that's super exciting.
Trying to hire a really amazingemail marketer I've done most of
(34:43):
it for the whole time and thenI handed it off to one of my
marketing guys.
But we really it's such avaluable channel.
It's the highest ROI channel wehave.
I'm trying to find someonewho's a killer at email.
That is just, you know, got alot of experience.
So we're hiring for that rightnow.
But I would say the number onepriority is is, yeah, doubling
down on organic content, reallylearning how to craft shorts and
(35:05):
script videos in that medium,that will get a lot of
visibility and awareness,building a couple of new funnels
and then just doing the boringstuff.
I feel like whenever I do oneof these, I feel like, man, I'm
just talking about boring shit.
I don't have any like whiz bangidea, so I don't know how much
value it's going to be.
But I think just keeping yourfocus and executing on the
(35:28):
fundamentals ultimately gets youwhere you want to go.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
It's the energy.
You have a great energy and Ithink it's funny.
I've talked to a bunch ofpeople who've come on the
podcast, who were listening tothe podcast when we started, and
I've had more than one peopletell me that it's just so much
of it is just about seeing, ifyou know, people are
aspirational listening to thisright now.
So much of it is just seeingpeople doing it themselves and I
think your, your approach isrefreshing in that regard.
(35:51):
It doesn't have to be thesemoments of genius, it has to be
thorough, well thought out.
You know, daily activity,basically, it's not.
It's not a it doesn't.
You don't have to get itperfect, you just have to keep
going at it.
What Seth Rogen says, like ifyou, if you keep trying, you
might make it.
If you quit, you definitelywon't.
Uh, that's basically wherewe're at.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
You know, the one thing that I've learned is
there's always going to be fear,there's always going to be
doubt.
You're always going to wonderif you're going to be able to
repeat the campaign.
You know we had anextraordinary Black Friday and I
was like holy shit, like we'renever going to be able to like
duplicate this type of day, youknow.
But then you do the work,you've practiced the
fundamentals, you build the list, you nurture the community and
(36:30):
then you do it again and, again,and again.
And I think the one thing thatI've learned is you know
execution over time will beateverything else.
It'll be every strategy, everytactic, every competitor.
Um, but the the hardest part,honestly and this is the part
that we all have to battle withas entrepreneurs is just staying
consistent and showing up everyday and not getting bored.
(36:52):
You know I did.
Uh, do you guys know?
Do you know Perry Belcher?
Speaker 2 (36:55):
I love that guy.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
He's great so we paid him his consulting fee for a
day to help us with acquisitiona couple of years ago and we
were digging through like allthe things that we had done and
what was working.
And I remember we were doing,we had our Facebook group and we
were doing all this nurturingand we had this like really
vibrant community.
Long story short, some thingschanged and he just said to me
I'll never forget, he goes yeah,it sounds like it worked so
(37:19):
well.
You stopped doing it.
Do you just hate making money?
And and I was just like, uh,like what do you say to that?
It's like it sounds like itworks so well.
You stopped doing it.
You must hate making money.
And it was such, such like akick in the dick in the best
possible way, because it justreinforced the fundamentals, bro
, like we got away from thefundamentals because we were
(37:41):
trying to chase some newstrategy or do something
different and you know itprobably cost us a lot of time
and opportunity and so justtrying to pull our focus back,
you know it's like stayingfocused, staying disciplined and
actually giving a shit aboutyour customers and I think
that's the superpower inbusiness.
After doing this for a while, Ithink very few people can stay
(38:01):
consistent over time, and if youcan do that, you're going to
win the race.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
The other thing you mentioned a couple of times I
think is critical.
A lot of the best entrepreneursthat I've seen they're willing
to get out of their comfort zonea little bit and go to these
type of events.
Where you're connecting withthe Perry Belchers, where you're
connecting with the EzraFirestones, where you're
connecting with these otherpeople that are going through
what you're going through andcan say something that to anyone
else might sound like not thatimportant but it hits you in
(38:26):
this exact right way becausethey've been there.
Can you talk a little bit abouthow you view those kind of
excursions you take?
Speaker 1 (38:32):
Yeah, I can tell you very candidly, the only reason
why we're having a conversationis because I've invested at
every chance I get intoconnections, networks and my
education.
You know, when I started as anaffiliate, I was a scared, broke
kid who didn't have any money,no knowledge and no contacts,
because it was 2009 and no onewas doing this shit.
And since then I've calculatedit up I've invested over half a
(38:54):
million dollars into books,training courses, seminars,
mastermind groups, personalcoaching, mentorship.
The only way to shortcut theroad ahead is to go to someone
who has already done it and paythem to teach you what to do.
And so I think the mostimportant thing any entrepreneur
could do is get around otherentrepreneurs who are where they
(39:14):
want to be or who have alreadydone and solved the problem that
they're trying to solve.
You know, said another way, wenever have a how problem.
It's always a who problem.
Who do we need to talk to orwho do we need to become in
order to bridge the gap fromwhere we are to where we want to
go?
I know, like my model it's funnymy assistant Regina.
She kind of teases me at timesbecause she's like you, think
(39:35):
everybody can just go to aconference and like learn skills
and implement, and I'm like,well, that's my model of the
world, like that's all I've everdone.
I just went to conferences, Ilearned shit and I implemented
and over the course of 13 years,we've now done $50 million in
sales, we've generated a lot ofbusiness, we've got a vibrant
community and it literallystarted from connecting at
conferences, reading books,going to seminars, and we're so
(40:02):
blessed to live in a world wherethere's so much free shit out
there and we have access toalmost anything online at this
point in time, and sometimes youjust got to pony up and pay to
join someone's group or pay fora day consulting.
If you're learning through it,the value is exponential and now
you're that guy.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Now you're that you.
You you wanted to be that guyand you became that guy.
I think I think there's a lotof people you may.
I hope you get some reach outsfrom this.
I think I think some peoplewill want where.
Where should people find you ifthey if they want to reach out
on LinkedIn or Twitter?
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Yeah, I think honestly, I'm on Instagram most
of the time.
Um, I'm actually.
I have my website'santhonyminkcom, if you wanna
join the newsletter there.
I have a podcast coming out ina couple of weeks actually.
It's called Entitled to Nothingand there's gonna be a part of
it that's all about mindset andlike the lessons that we've
learned on the journey.
And then there's gonna be apart of it that's kind of about
(40:49):
like business mindset andexecutive leadership and things
like that, where we dointerviews with other business
owners.
Like that, where we dointerviews with other business
owners but Anthony Mink onInstagram, twitter, youtube and
then anthonyminkcom.
And yeah, I'd love if anybodyhas a specific question.
(41:10):
You know, I run my businessevery day because I love doing
it.
I love the game.
I think that entrepreneurshipis the game of life.
You know, every like everythingthat we experienced today is
sold from someone to someone forsomething, and that's what
makes the world go round.
And the way that you win thegame of business is by finding
ways to add more value to yourcustomers than any of your
competitors can, and if we canplay that game and constantly
(41:31):
get better at adding value andfiguring out the ways to meet
the needs of our customersbetter than anybody else can.
We're always going to win, andnow that I've kind of got to a
point in my career where youknow I have a message and some
things that I would like toshare.
I remember what it was like whenI was getting started and I was
just a scared, broke kid anddidn't know who to talk to or no
contacts.
(41:51):
And if there's anything I cando to support entrepreneurs on
their journey, yeah, pleasereach out, connect with me on
Instagram.
I'd love to help any way I can.
And dude, it's.
I just got to say it's apleasure to be on here.
I think, again, you guys arethe one of the you know premier
DTC podcasts.
I have implemented stuff fromsome of your early episodes when
I was still in the weedsrunning ads and doing things
(42:11):
multiple years ago that weregame changing for us.
That really helped us crack anew funnel or optimize an ad or
do something.
So the value you guys haveadded to this community is
absolute and it's a pleasure tobe here, and everybody listening
should definitely listen towhat you guys say and the
tactics and skills that you putout.
You guys are great.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Thanks, anthony.
Yeah, I really appreciate thatand I feel really privileged to
be in a position to be able toput out the value that we put
out and to connect with allthese on-fire entrepreneurs who
are putting out the same value.
And also like putting out thatvalue, like the fact that I've
got like three people on my teamwho make really good money I've
got you know, we pay people onour team well like the fact that
I'm in a position to build abusiness where I can help other
(42:52):
people have great lives and livethe kind of lives that they
want to live as well is such anincredibly rewarding feeling.
It makes me realize, like howdid capitalism go so wrong at
like the super high scales andall the weird ways we're seeing
it rot in the world, where, likewhen?
When I see it on a person toperson basis, I just see people
like adding value to their localsystems, to their, to their
(43:12):
families, to their, to theirclients, like just more of this,
and I feel like we can.
We can, we can win this thing.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
A hundred percent agree.
It's funny you say that we justtook speaking about education.
I just took seven people frommy team to traffic and
conversion summit.
Most of them it was the firsttime they ever went to a
conference.
And I had this moment where wewere out to dinner and I was
like, holy shit, I used to be atthis conference, scared, not
(43:40):
making any money, not sure ifI'd ever figure it out.
And now I have this incredible,vibrant team of people and it
was this kind of full circlemoment where it was just to your
point of feeling so grateful tobe able to provide those types
of opportunities and createthese things.
And it's again, it's just madepossible by execution over time.
But on the capitalism front, Ibelieve capitalism is the
greatest system for elevatingpeople to prosperity that has
ever existed on the face of theearth.
What I believe is we've nowentered into an age of almost
(44:02):
absolute transparency.
At this point in time in ourworld, you can't fuck anybody
for too long before you're foundout about, and the more
transparency we have, the morethat the market is going to
demand that the companies alignwith their values, and I think
we're already seeing this in abig way where consumers are
(44:22):
saying that the value of thecompany that they shop for is
one of the very first indicatorswhy they're shopping there.
And so I think it's upon all ofus as entrepreneurs, as
business owners, to get very,very clear on the culture we
want to create internally, onthe values that we want to
operate by, and project thosevalues out and draw a line in
the sand and say this is who weare, this is who we're for and
(44:44):
this is who we stand against.
And you don't have to do it ina disrespectful way, but you
just do it very as a matter offact.
And there's companies like that.
That.
Those are the companies, Ithink, that are going to lead
the capitalism revolution to thenext level and going to really
redefine how business is doneand bring a lot of that soul
back into it.
And that's that's what I'm mostexcited about.
That's what we're trying to dohere, and I hope that's what all
(45:06):
these listeners out there aregoing to do as well.
They're going to get reallyclear on how to bring soul back
into their business byvalue-driven cultures and
communities, and with that, mansky's the limit.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
I follow this guy on TikTok that I really enjoy.
He's called Cancel thisClothing Company and all he does
is break down his grocery storeshelves and show you which
brands are mom and pop operatedor family operated and which are
owned by BlackRock.
Essentially, right, and it'sjust like red, red, red, it's
BlackRock, blackrock, and thenthere's like two or three
products down there Red, red,red.
It's BlackRock, blackrock, andthen there's like two or three
products down there.
And it made me realize.
(45:38):
Like you know, you go back towhat Shopify said originally arm
the rebels.
Right, that's what.
That's what Shopify's missionwas to was to arm the rebels,
and I feel like that's whatthat's.
You know, you're a rebel, we're, we're helping arm the rebels
on the DTC side as well.
And it's interesting, like Ithink.
I think I can say I'm firmly onthe on the side of the little
(45:59):
guy in this case.
Right, like the more, becausethose are the people that are
going to be concentrated more onbringing value to their
ecosystems than these megalithic, you know, blackrock companies.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more.
You know, and I think I think weall have a vote with our dollar
and how we spend that dollar isa vote that we're making every
day, and I think we should allbring awareness to like where
we're getting our stuff and howwe can support brands that that
support what we care about.
And you know, one of the one ofthe number one selling points
(46:29):
for Live Bearded is made inAmerica and we've made a very
big point to manufacture all ofour grooming products right here
and to tell our tribe about it.
And when we survey audience,what's one of the number one
reasons why you buy from us, orwhat are the number one reasons
why you buy from us?
It's always the quality of theproduct, number one, and then
number two is made in America,and so we use that right, we
(46:50):
plant that flag, and I love thefact that we have all these
disruptive, young, scrappyrebels in the entrepreneurial
community that have theopportunity to go out there and
re-inject that soul, thatculture back into the world and
really redefine again fromlegacy capitalism and big brands
(47:14):
and kind of the way that theyused to do things to the way we
can lead the charge and doingthings in a more holistic and
improved way.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
Easy, right, easy.
Well, uh, Anthony, we're goingto have to stay in touch.
I think we're going to have todo we're gonna have to do at
least annual podcast to uh tokeep up.
Here we can keep our beardprogress.
I'm just going to let mine go.
He's going to get really justlong.
It's not super thick, but I'mloving it.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
Hit me up, I'll send you whatever you need.
Bro, it's a pleasure I reallymean it, man.
It's a pleasure to come on hereand what you guys have done.
You've added a lot of value tomy life in terms of actionable
steps that turn into revenue,and if there's anything I can do
to support your community, Iwould love to do it.
I'd love to stay in touch.
Definitely got to get thatsnowboarding trip up in Whistler
(47:55):
you were talking about.
I'm in we're doing it, I'm goingto win and yeah, let me know
how I can support and let'sdefinitely stay in touch.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
Awesome Thanks, anthony, this is great.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
All right, brother, talk to you soon.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.
If you're not a subscriber toour newsletter, you can do that
right now atdirecttoconsumerallonewordco.
I'm Eric Dick and this has beenthe DTC Podcast.
We'll see you next time.
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